1. Life
Henry St. John Bolingbroke was born in Battersea in 1678. He was
educated at Eton and Oxford, after which he traveled about two years
on the continent. In 1700, shortly after his return, he married the
daughter of Sir Henry Winchcomb, from whom he soon separated. Up to
this period, he was chiefly known for his extreme dissipation but,
after entering parliament in 1701, he devoted himself to politics,
joined the Tory party, and soon made himself prominent as an orator.
In 1704 he was made secretary of war and retained this office until
1708 when the Whigs came into power, after which he retired from
politics and applied himself to study. After resignation, Bolingbroke
retained great influence as the queen's favorite counselor. On the
fall of the Whig party in 1710, he was made secretary of state for
foreign affairs. In 1712, he was called to the house of lords by the
title of Viscount Bolingbroke and in 1713, against the wishes of
nearly the entire nation, concluded the peace of Utrecht. Having
previously quarreled with his old friend Harley, now the Earl of
Oxford and his most powerful rival, he contrived his dismissal in July
1714. Bolingbroke immediately proceeded to form a strong Jacobite
ministry in accordance with the well-known inclinations of his royal
mistress, whose death a few days after threw into disorder his
dangerous and unprincipled schemes. The accession of George I was a
deathblow to Bolingbroke's political prospects, on August 28 he was
deposed from office, in March 1715 he fled to France and, in August
1715 he was attainted. For some time he held the office of secretary
of state to the Pretender, but his restless and ambitious spirit
yearned for the 'large excitement' of English politics. Bolingbroke's
efforts to obtain a pardon were not successful and he retired to a
small estate which he had purchased near Orleans. In 1718 his first
wife died and, in 1720, he married the rich widow of the Marquis de
Vilette.
A prudent use of this lady's wealth enabled him to return to England
in September 1724. His property was restored to him, but he was never
permitted to take his seat in parliament. He therefore removed himself
to his villa at Dawley, near Uxbridge, where he occasionally enjoyed
the society of Swift, Pope, and others of his old friends with whom he
had corresponded in his exile. It was at Dawley where Bolingbroke
diversified his moral and metaphysical studies by his attacks on the
ministry in his periodical the Craftsman, in which the letters forming
his Dissertation on Parties first appeared. In 1735, finding his
political hopes clouded forever, he went back to France and continued
to live there until 1742. During his second residence abroad, he wrote
his Letters on the Study of History in which he violently attacked the
Christian religion. He died on October 1, 1751, after a long illness.
His talents were brilliant and versatile; his style of writing was
polished and eloquent; but his fatal lack of sincerity and honest
purpose, and the low and unscrupulous ambition which made him scramble
for power with a selfish indifference to national security, hindered
him from looking wisely and deeply into any question. His
philosophical theories are not profound, nor his conclusions solid,
while his criticism of passing history is worthless.
2. Philosophy
Bolingbroke's philosophical writings were mostly unprinted until after
his death, when David Mallet published a five-volume collection of
Bolingbroke's works. The philosophical portions of this collection
display his dependence on Locke, who Bolingbroke acknowledged as his
"master." Using Locke's ideas and his own, Bolingbroke attempts to
explain how one attains knowledge and what its limits are, as well as
asserting his own beliefs about God and religion. In doing so, he
makes virulent attacks on previous philosophers such as Plato,
Malebranche, and Berkley.
Following Locke, Bolingbroke distinguishes between ideas of sensation
and ideas of reflection. Borrowing further from Locke, he calls these
"simple ideas" and says they are the materials out of which complex
ideas are made. He goes on to say that although one may not understand
the process by which objects produce sensory perceptions, one can know
they do so. Likewise, one may not know how the will causes action,
such as the movement of an arm, but this does not hinder one from
knowing it is the will which causes it. He presents these beliefs as
clear and obvious and in no need of being questioned. Bolingbroke
gives less power, than does Locke, to the mind concerning its ability
to combine ideas within itself, putting this power in nature instead.
Bolingbroke also maintains that nature (the observable world) serves
as a reliable guide, and error comes when one uses one's faculties out
of accordance with nature.
Bolingbroke is known for being a Deist. He asserts there is a God, and
proving this by reason is possible. However, this God is not at all
like humans, and Bolingbroke speaks of anthropomorphism with contempt.
Instead, he says God is so dissimilar to human beings, the distance
between them is unimaginable and no comparison between the two is
possible. Bolingbroke uses the cosmological argument to demonstrate
there is a God, but goes on to assert that this God is omnipotent and
omniscient and always does what is best. (Bolingbroke even claims this
is the best of all possible worlds.) In order to defend his view of
God's transcendence, Bolingbroke says that while one can be certain
God knows everything, one can never comprehend the way in which He
knows things, and goes as far as to say God's manner of knowing cannot
be understood by human beings. God's morality is equally beyond human
understanding. Our moral values are based solely on our existence as
social beings who cannot live lives of isolation or follow a path of
pure selfishness. These morals can be discovered by reason. While they
arise out of the nature of things created by God, they are in no way
indicative of a divine sense of morality. God created the world, and
the nature of the world determines morality. However, this nature does
not reflect the character or nature of God.
Bolingbroke states Christianity was originally a "complete" and "very
plain system of religion," was actually no more than the "natural
religion," and Jesus did not teach anything more than could be
discovered by reason. Bolingbroke expresses regret that Christian
teachings did not remain at their initial, simple level, and wishes
they had never been corrupted by such systems as Platonism, which he
regards as the product of mere imagination. His understanding of
religion furthermore denies the validity of prayer by insisting one
could not come into contact with one's deity, denigrates the
importance of the crucifixion in Christianity, and suggests one cannot
know whether or not there is a soul which survives the death of the
body.
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